Ned Pratt is an award winning Newfoundland photographer with an innate understanding of the province’s beautiful but harsh landscape, which creates a foundation for his minimal, striking photographs.
Pratt’s playful use of perspective and vantage point transforms photographs of familiar landmarks into elegant abstractions.
The son of celebrated Canadian painters Christopher Pratt and Mary Pratt, he crafts spare, abstract photographs.
“There were always books about the history of art and different artists neatly stacked on shelves in our home… Work I considered abstract interested me the most – the work of Piet Mondrian and Marc Chagall, in particular.”
Ned Pratt
Drawn to the solitude of photography
Pratt was drawn to the solitude of photography, but the medium also represented, in his words, “a road that led away, at least technically,” from his parents’ painting practices. The clean lines and spare compositions that mark Ned’s work show the influence of his father’s canvases—and his way of seeing the world.
Ned Pratt has over 25 years experience in corporate and commercial photography, photojournalism and photo illustration.
Pratt holds a BFA in photography from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and a BA in art history from Acadia University. His photography has been exhibited at the former Art Gallery of Newfoundland and Labrador, the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, PREFIX Photo, the Scotiabank Contact Photography Festival (2012) and in Oh, Canada: Contemporary Art from North America at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art.
Image at top of post: Yellow Store at Red Cliffe, Pigment inkjet print on Kodak Professional Photo paper, 33 × 46.25, 2023, via Christina Parker Gallery, here.
Explore more of the works at these links:
Ned Pratt’s website, here.
His latest exhibition (2023) here.
At Christina Parker gallery, here.
At Nicholas Metivier gallery, here.
This is No. 61 in 150 Artists, an ongoing series on Canadian artists you should know.
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Unique photographs. The lamp that divides that last one makes it look like a dyptich!
Great point, and unique is the appropriate description. Thank you.
ahhh! imagine having to live up to that heritage, that name! and then… he does, and at the same time is himself
Yes. Takes a lot of talent and drive to accomplish that in the face of the parents’ fame.
and strength of character! I thought the austerity of lines reminiscent of his father in particular, but the choice and focus of subject to be his own — all very attractive
Yes, strength of character . . . read quite a bit about him and that’s absolutely true.